HP Introduces Sub-$100 Windows Tablet

jfruh writes While Windows-based tablets haven't exactly set the world on fire, Microsoft hasn't given up on them, and its hardware partners haven't either. HP has announced a series of Windows tablets, with the 7-inch low-end model, the Stream 7, priced at $99. The Stream brand is also being used for low-priced laptops intended to compete with Chromebooks (which HP also sells). All are running Intel chips and full Windows, not Windows RT.

Comments

now that its not $700

[GarretSidzaka]

sort of want

Re:now that its not $700

[Control-Z]

Yeah I would spend $100 to see if I like Windows on a tablet, especially if it is the full version of Windows.

Re: now that its not $700

[iamhassi]

But being $100 it will probably be slow and crappy which will make Windows 8 appear slower and crappier than it already is.

Re: now that its not $700

[justthinkit]

Troll much?

Windows 8 is much faster than Windows 7. I love it for its speed of boot-up, and shutdown -- just what I want for a laptop I frequently have to start and stop.

Re: now that its not $700

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows is free to OEMs for devices with smaller than 9" screens.

Re: now that its not $700

[slazzy]

I wouldn't be surprised if MS is paying HP to be selling these things so cheap...

Re: now that its not $700

[Anonymous Coward]

Troll much?

I love it for its speed of boot-up, and shutdown

That is because it goes into hibernation. They cheat because they can't get it to shutdown or boot from a cold start faster than a Chromebook, even on superior hardware.

Re: now that its not $700

[Luckyo]

Except that laptops are hibernated, not shut down in most usage scenarios.

But well shilled.

Re:now that its not $700

[tibit]

It's probably good enough to do software development on. I can't see it being any slower, CPU-wise, than a Core II duo 5 year old MBP, never mind that it has 2 more cores. It seems like it could be a very good deal - hook up to an external monitor and BT keyboard/mouse and it should be a screamer. It's astonishing how good consumer-grade hardware is these days.

Re: now that its not $700

[tepples]

Depends on what kind of boat. If it's a coracle (bowl-shaped 1-person boat intended to be carried on a man's back), and it's in usable condition, I'll take it.

Will it run Linux?

[wirefarm]

I would be interested, if I didn't have to run Windows on it.

Re:Will it run Linux?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I would be interested, if I didn't have to run Windows on it.

You might want to be a bit careful, some of the ultra-cheap Windows devices are UEFI only; but 32 bit, which freaks most Linux installers out; but these are not Windows RT machines, so they will not be cryptographically locked out.

Time, and experimentation, will tell how good compatibility actually is; but it should be markedly easier than any Windows RT device, and honestly quite probably easier than doing a Linux port to a lot of common Android devices(yes, bodging a headless debian userland or something onto an Android system is easy; but getting X, using a mainline kernel, or not using bionic, less so...)

Re:Will it run Linux?

[binarylarry]

Internally, this tablet was codenamed the "Desperation."

Re:Will it run Linux?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

That's not the issue: Since virtually all (x86) systems built later than 2010 are 64-bit, the expected case is 64 bit UEFI. Contemporary linux distributions don't even bat an eye at booting on a 64-bit system with 64-bit UEFI (well, there are a lot of ugly details under the surface, probably enough to keep several devs more or less permanently alcoholic; but the user doesn't need to see that).

However, there are a few edge cases that really haven't gotten enough attention and/or love to smooth them over: Apple has some older models with 32-bit EFI, and 64-bit CPUs, that are a bit weird, and there was a period where MS/Intel was using 32-bit Atom processors, with UEFI and no BIOS fallback, in order to hit aggressive price points for 'win-tablet' systems. These are a huge pain to boot to anything except the OS they were designed for; because distributions with good UEFI support almost always expect 64-bit CPUs, and 32-bit distros almost always expect BIOS booting.

There may be others; but the 'clover trail' based hardware that uses Z2760 or similar atom processors is what I'm talking about.

Re:Will it run Linux?

[peterhoeg]

Booting 32 bit UEFI on a 64 bit CPU has been fixed in kernel 3.15. http://kernelnewbies.org/Linux...

So, now HP sells a tablet

[Anonymous Coward]

For less than TI sells a calculator.

Re:So, now HP sells a tablet

[Tokolosh]

And you can get a very nice RPN calculator app for free.

Re:So, now HP sells a tablet

[JeffOwl]

And it still wouldn't be allowed for tests

Re:So, now HP sells a tablet

[Nyder]

And it still wouldn't be allowed for tests

In my days we used pencil & paper to do math. We had to *gasp* actually work the problem out.

My days sucked.

Re:So, now HP sells a tablet

[WrongMonkey]

Its not pointless at all. Long division and multiplication are an exercise in how to take a large calculation and algorithmically break it down into manageable units. This is a fundamental skill for practical math at any level.

How does it handle Pinterest?

[MetalliQaZ]

If it can handle media-heavy social websites, then I think this would be a winner for my wife and others like her.

Re:How does it handle Pinterest?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

The laptops are based on the Celeron N2840, with 2GB of RAM. I can't seem to find much in the way of benchmarks; but I suspect that they are surprisingly adequate. What is a bit surprising is that the the N2840 has a quoted tray price of $107, so either Intel is cutting HP one hell of a deal, or I don't even want to know what HP cobbled the rest of the system together from...

Re:How does it handle Pinterest?

[afidel]

They're likely getting a subsidy from MS paid for by future Office365/OneDrive revenues plus I'm sure this has Bing integration so there's some ad revenue to split.

Re:How does it handle Pinterest?

[theshowmecanuck]

How many zeros is a crapload? 4 or 5?

Re:No touchscreen by default

[jdschulteis]

The new Stream laptops by default have no touchscreen

I wanted one, until I read this part. Could you really consider it a tablet if you have to plug a mouse in for it to work?

HP is using the Stream brand for both laptops and tablets.

Re:No touchscreen by default

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Two different product lines: one is cheapy laptops(and since a touchscreen adds a nontrivial hit to the BOM, these don't come with them) and the other is inexpensive 7 and 8 inch tablets (which do have touchscreens, since they don't have keyboards or touchpads).

New tablet price point

[Animats]

Why not? There have been $30 Android tablets available in Shentzen for a year or two.

Re: New tablet price point

[Anon-Admin]

The $35 ones I bought were dual core, 1024mb ram, 2g internal storage, 10 point capacitive touch, with a micro-SD slot that will take up to a 32gig card.

So far they play all the games and run just about anything we care to put on them. Though We use them for browsing and as the remote control for the OpenElec XBMC/Raspberry Pi units.

Re:No touchscreen by default

[BaronAaron]

The Stream laptops won't have a touchscreen by default, not the tablets.

PiPO tablet

[jones_supa]

There's also a $81 tablet coming from PiPO.

"Pipo" means "beanie" in Finnish, by the way, hehheh.

Re:Should be free

[NoNonAlphaCharsHere]

When oh when is Microsoft going to get it through their heads that people DO NOT WANT to run Office on tablets, plug-in keyboard or no.

Re:No touchscreen by default

[oodaloop]

Reading is hard! Let's go shopping!

Re:99 is not sub $100

[oodaloop]

Is 99 more than 100?

Battery life?

[gstoddart]

All are running Intel chips and full Windows

A full windows install with Intel chips isn't exactly tuned for mobile battery performance.

So will these things have an exceedingly short battery life?

And I'm betting they will have so little memory as to be unusable -- because Windows with anything less than 4G is a complete dog in my experience.

I predict a terrible product on this one.

Re:Battery life?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've got the Asus transformerbook T100. It's a tablet that runs full fat windows 8.1 No fans. Charges USB. I get 8-10 hours of use out of it between charges. (Comes with a detachable keyboard/trackpad which is nice. Also has HDMI out)

It's not as nice as, say, an ipad but it's a full windows machine and it costs half what an ipad does. Since Intel introduced the baytrail Atom they really have been able to make machines that operate in a no-bullshit tablet power enevlope.

Re:Should be free

[omnichad]

They might want to run a reader app (similar to Adobe Reader) that would format 100% correctly.

I don't even want to buy Office for a desktop if they're going to keep going with subscription service.

Re:99 is not sub $100

[ThorGod]

In a world where people throw away pennies or leave them lying on the street 99.99 is 100.

Re:Screens too small for Windows

[Immerman]

>Hospitals are a huge source of infections, despite efforts to disinfect everything in sight.

Arguably to some extent because of efforts to disinfect everything in sight. The result being that any infection you pick up has a good chance of being drug resistant. The problem with multiple drug resistant (i.e. virtually untreatable) infections was getting so bad in some hospitals in... the Netherlands I think it was... that they decided to stop disinfecting entirely. Instead they went back to the old fashioned approach of *cleaning* things thoroughly - remove the germs from the environment and it doesn't matter if they're dead or not. Those hospitals are now the safest in the world when it comes to infections. Infection rates are down, and there is no longer any trace of the drug resistant strains so if you do pick up an infection it's easily treatable.